Cinema on the Front Line, livre ebook

Winner of the Theatre Library Association’s 2021 Richard Wall Memorial Award for an exemplary work in the field of recorded performance.

Cinema on the Front Line offers the first comprehensive history and analysis of how the medium of cinema intersected with the lives of British soldiers during the First World War. Documenting the wartime use of cinema, from domestic recruitment drives to makeshift theatrical venues established on the front line, and then in convalescent hospitals and camps, this book provides evidence of the previously unacknowledged importance of the medium as recreational support and entertainment for soldiers living through the trauma of conflict.

Presenting the fruits of his archival research, the author makes extensive use of war diaries and other military records to foreground the voices and perspectives of British soldiers themselves. Including discussion of over 70 films, this book will interest specialists in British film history, propaganda film, exhibition and audience studies, as well as historians and students of the First World War, propaganda and the military.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: Cinema, Recruitment Campaigns and the Outbreak of War

Chapter 2: The BEF and Film Exhibition on the Western Front

Chapter 3: Soldier Cinema Audiences on the Front Line

Chapter 4: A War of Representation: Soldiers and Topical Films

Chapter 5: The Cinema, Recovery and Rehabilitation

Afterword

Appendix

Bibliography

Index